The Returned
by ariel2me
Summary: The man who returns from Dorne after three years of captivity is a stranger to Argella, but not the same stranger she wed.


The door connecting Orys' bedchamber with Argella is open, ever so slightly. Thar has always been the sign, her way of indicating, __You may come to my bed tonight.__ He stands by the door, watching her maid brushing Argella's hair while she carefully dabs scent on her wrists and her neck. Lavender, from a violet-hued bottle he recognizes as the scent he gave her on the last of her nameday he was present for, three years ago. A different lifetime ago. She had used it only once before in his presence, that scent, on the last night they were together, the night before he departed for Dorne. Judging from the quantity of the remaining content, she must not have touched it since then.

He stares at her reflection in the mirror. She is smiling, offering words of praise and encouragement to her maid. The woman, no, the girl, for she could not have been older than five-and-ten, the girl flushes with joy, carefully and reverently putting the comb back in its elaborately-carved box. He remembers this comb too, the last nameday gift her father had given to Argella.

She must have felt his eyes watching her, for she turns, then, turns around and smiles, beckoning him with a nod. It is that smile, that tentative, uncertain smile glancing over her face that roots him still in his position by the door, that prevents him from taking another step forward into her arms.

 _ _She does not know either,__ he thinks, bitterly. Just like Aegon, like Rhaenys, like Visenya, she does not know what to make of him, of this new him, of this shell stripped of the essence of him. Back in King's Landing, when his half-siblings had tried, each in his or her own way, to convince him to stay longer in Aegonfort, to delay his return to Storm's End, he had resisted, for a variety of reasons too complicated and contradictory even to himself. But one of the clearest reasons had been his conviction that __she__ would be the same. That Argella would be the same, because it would not have touched her, his new incapacity, his new shell of self. Unlike Aegon, unlike Rhaenys, unlike Visenya, his wife does not care enough about him to be made different by his misfortune. Once that would have been a source of grief for him, but now he would have taken comfort in that, for it would have allowed him to pretend that nothing has changed, that he is still the same.

But of course he is not. And the look Argella is giving him at the moment is more than ample proof of that. __Don't! Do not pity me,__ he thinks, echoing her own words to him when he was about to cover her naked body with his cloak after her own men had betrayed her. __He__ did not even have that excuse for his defeat. None of his men had betrayed him, had stripped him naked and paraded him in chains. All of the men captured alongside him had also lost their sword hands, yet another sin haunting his conscience.

"My lord," Argella calls out. "Orys," she beckons, taking a few steps closer towards him. She would not have taken those steps three years ago. She would have stood her ground, firmly, waiting for him to make his way to her, with her eyebrow raised, her lips smiling a slightly mocking smile. There is no trace of any of that on her face tonight. She looks earnest. She looks solemn. She looks ... concerned. __No, not you too.__ He has had enough of concern. He closes the door separating them without another look.

* * *

If Argella is being completely honest with herself, she would have said that the sight of Orys' clean-shaven face is almost as disquieting as his missing hand. The expression on his face as his squire is shaving him is also troubling. She would have expected impatience, or perhaps anger that this function is now being done for him while he acclimatizes himself with using his left hand for everything. But what she sees on his face instead is resignation.

 _ _No, this is not you. This is not the man I -__

The man she knew? She could not lay claim to that, to knowing him, not really.

She had not expected him to return with a wild, unruly beard, of course, despite his three years of captivity in Wl of Wyl's darkest dungeon. That would have been taken care while he was staying in King's Landing. But never in her imagination had she expected him to return without a beard at all. She had never seen him without a beard, had never touched his face without a beard.

And she still has not. Touched his clean-shaven face, that is. Night after night, she leaves the door connecting their bedchambers open, and night after night, he closes it, not with a thud or a loud bang, but quietly, like a scurrying ghost. She could go to him, of course. It is not pride, stopping her, but her intuition that he would see it as pity, the same way she had suspected that his acts of chivalry long ago were grounded in pity. Pity for a helpless, pathetic, defeated enemy.

 _ _There is a difference,__ he had said, that night long ago in his tent, __there is a difference between pity and sympathy.__

IS it pity, or sympathy, that she is feeling for him now? She could not say, could not tell the difference. She had been prepared to fake a lack of indifference, to fake concern for his plight, had even practiced saying a few words of deep concern before his return, thinking, __I could fake it, easily enough, even if I do not feel it.__ It is only a matter of rearranging your face after all, of putting on a mask.

But faking indifference, it turns out, is a harder proposition all around.

"This is my punishment from the gods," he says, the night she finally goes to him, when she finally breaches the door separating them, woken up from her sleep by his piercing cry.

"Punishment? For what?"

"For taking what does not belong to me, what should never have belonged to a bastard."

"It has nothing to do with being a bastard.

She is only telling the truth. It would not have made things any better, to have her birthright stolen by a trueborn son.

"How did you stand it?" he implores. "How did you go on?"

She knows what it is he is asking. How do you go on, when all you wish for is for the earth to open up and swallow you whole? How do you go on, how do you take the next step, and the next, and all the ones after that, when all you want to do is lay your head down and never rise again?

"You do what you have to do," she replies. "You feed your wrath, if you must. You hate, if that is what it takes. You -"

He turns his face away. "Who is there to hate except myself? Except my own weakness and my own folly?"

* * *

He locks the door, the connecting door between his bedchamber and Argella's. She has her own key, of course, but he does not see her using it. It would have been a breach too far.

How pathetic he had been, the night before. How he loathed himself for it. That must have been how Argella felt, that night in his tent. __Forgive me, my lady, I did not understand. I did not understand why recoiled from my kindness back then,__

He understands now, all too well.

He does not remember falling asleep. He does not remember waking up, does not remember opening the door to the corridor. He remembers thinking, __I should have locked this door too.__ He opens his eyes, and there he is, barefoot, in his nightshirt, face to face with his wife.

"I -" he begins, but could not find the next word, let alone all the ones after that.

She takes his hand without hesitation, leading him not to his bedchamber, but her own. He is shivering, shivering in a room with a blazing fire roaring in the fireplace. Wordlessly, she wraps a blanket over his shivering body. They sit side by side on her bed, not touching, not looking at one another.

"The nightmares will not go away for a very long time," she says, when she finally looks at him. "You will have to learn to live with them, that is the truth of it."

She touches his cheek. He flinches, regrets the flinching, and then, with his left hand, with the only one he has left, he touches the hand touching his cheek.

"You will have to learn to live with yourself as you are now, not as you were," she continues.

"I survived. And so will you," she finishes.


End file.
